Indore Tales | Cows To Birds To Amphibians: This Sagar Juice Centre Offers More Than Just Shakes To Visitors
Feeding Punganur cows to petting macaws to watching fish feels like a therapy in this Indore juice shop, here is what we experienced.
By Bilal Bhat
Published : May 5, 2025 at 8:15 PM IST
|Updated : May 5, 2025 at 9:09 PM IST
Unlike other towns in the Hindi heartland, Indore, the business capital of Madhya Pradesh, features a fancy nightlife where both men and women, together with children, engage in the city’s bustling. Great singers like Lata Mangeshkar and poets like Rahat Indori were born in this city. It has also produced great artists like Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi, commonly known as Johnny Walker, and contemporary writers like Javed Akhtar. Actor Salman Khan has his roots in the city.
This city remains resilient and continues to produce enthusiasts who wish to keep this city versatile. Those who were born in this city seem to have been blessed with creativity is what locals believe. “Almost everyone here makes an attempt to do things differently, regardless of what you do and how you do it,“ said Rajesh Kumar, an Indore native. Pointing to the juice bar taking a sip from his mango juice, says, “Come see how creativity is ingrained, as if we have inherited it from this place.”
After Rajesh finished his juice, he kept the empty glass on a tray and glanced at the banners displayed on one of the walls of the juice bar. The banners are in Hindi and one of them reads: Sagar Juice Ka juice aahata, mahilayen ,bache, wa pariwar sahit bethkar peene ki shahi vavastha (Juice of Sagar Juice, an area where women, children, and families can make themselves to enjoy royal treatment while having a juice). The road that runs by the juice bar is approximately 60 feet wide. Without a road divider, auto rickshaws and other forms of transport operate on both sides, making it difficult for people to park their vehicles. Customers mostly visit here on motorcycles. People in large numbers can be seen queuing to wait for their turn to have their glass of juice that helps them escape the scorching heat.
Adjacent to the juice bar, two cows and a calf are on display. Some children feed them straw. The cows belong to Punganur breed of Andhra Pradesh. Next to the cow shed, hang heavy chain curtains, and you can hear birds chirping and parrots whistling. A small board above the curtains read: Jeevdaya mandir fokat main pravash duar (means Jeevdaya mandir entry is free). There are twelve different bird species, including parrots inside the facility. Some children are seen taking joyrides next to the cow shed. A Merry-go-round is placed for children below the age of four. Joyrides are free of cost as long as their parents or older siblings are supervising them. For children, this is a happening place where they get to see birds, animals, and also can enjoy rides.
The owner of this facility is Raju Sagar locally known as Sagar juice wala. Raju and his 27- year-old-son Pushpak Sagar, together with a team of 40 employees make sure the birds in the shop are kept safe and are properly fed with water and food. “You have people come here to have Thandai (Juice) as they call it in Indore. Almost every individual or couple has children with them. Children barely drink juice but instead play around with birds, animals, or other species. They sometimes hang around by the watching their younger siblings’ rides. Raju says, these people come here on their own, but they can leave only when their children allow. This is a place full of excitement for children, and their parents use Thandai to cool their bodies and quench their thirst.
To make juices more attractive, the Sagars have given names to Thandai. Some bear monikers like corona and GST. They do exactly what the juice wala wants. That’s sarcasm. Such nomenclatures tickle your tummies with the extra appeal. The notice on GST juice can roughly be translated as this: Sagar's Royal Shake (GST Special), a blend of saffron rabadi, dry fruits and a special mix of various shakes (GST) for Rs 80 per glass. The other one on Corona reads: Corona vaccine Rooh-Afza juice shake offers you 100% relief guaranteed from the scorching 40 to 45 degrees temperature. It is a blend of rose, icecream, ice, and cardamom infused mixed shake for Rs 40 per glass.
The floor of the juice bar is made of transparent fibre and has an aquarium beneath it. A variety of amphibians and fishes freely float as visitors walk over the floor. The transparent aquarium also has tortoises which swam underneath the shoes of the customer's children walking over when this writer visited. Raju has set up juice bar, floor aquarium, birds place, and the cow shed as three distinct spaces each having about 10 ft, with clear demarcations. The juice bar perched over an aquarium give clients a reason to come inside and have a look at this creative way to entertaining customers. With at least 1000 clients visiting every day, the shop owner, Raju, rides a scooter and leads the life of a typical halwai. He sits at a plastic tool which overlooks a platform surrounded by variety of juice flavours and manages three responsibilities which contribute to one business- the juice bar and sweet shop.
The birds section is the most attractive part, as macaws whistling welcome people inside the room. When clients enter this section, Raju whistles at the birds, and the birds reciprocate with whistles. His whistles serve as a signal to them that they must act, even if they appear to be silent otherwise. As soon as Raju walks into the room, birds start circle around him, and some of them settle on his shoulders while he spreads his arms open to them. Once he leaves the room, birds barely come down, is what he says.
Raju has inherited love for birds from his father at a tender age, when he had a lot of them in his village. Raju took care of them while his father was away in town. Juice bar and sweets is his primary business, and he has a chain of them at various places in Indore. Raju Sagar is a household name for juices and sweets. He is winner of Golden Books of Records for making, 51,000 frozen ladoos. He makes 110 types of juices.
